Future of Universal Monsters

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LONGER LONGER LONGER. KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT. 20 minutes is def longer than before and i love it! if you dont wanna release stuff that isnt perfect then release it as UNEDITED! everything!!!

The Maguffin should be something that grants whoever has it the wish of their choice
Dracula-Immunity to sunlight
Wolfman-removal of curse
Mummy-be reunited with his love in death
Gillman-revival of his race
Frankenstein monster-for the bride to not be afraid of him
Invisible man-abilty to become visible/invisible whenever he wants
Dr. Jekyll-Eradication of Hyde
Mr. Hyde-Separation from Jekyll

What would be really intresting is if they filmed it like Clue and gave different endings to different theaters.

I feel like your way off hear. The maguffin should reflect the character that the wizard addresses. What I mean by that is.
Frankenstein\Tin man(Heart)- Bit of an assumption on my part but, if I were building a corpse to be reanimated with electricity I wouldn’t think bloodflow was very important.
Mummy\Scarecrow(Brain)- James just nailed it here, his line of thinking about the organs being removed before mummification is what got me thinking along these lines.
Wolfman\Cowardly Lion(Courage namely balls, a.k.a Nards. and as we all know Wolman doesn’t have nards.
There’s your Monster Squad tie in, if it weren’t for “Dorothy’s” adventure with the Monsters, Wolfman would in fact not have had nards on the night in question.

I like your ideas.
Some time ago, there was a Lego series of the classic monsters, like the Gill-Man, Frankenstein’s monster and the wolfman. They each had a McGuffin that, if all were brought together, would unleash their cumulative magical potential. Something like that could be done for a Universal Monsters All-Star movie. But I guess that could also be too similar to what Marvel is doing with the infinity stones.

Well remember, in Mad Mad Mad Mad World, the money they’re all going after ends up getting scattered across town, in a sort of “nobody wins; everybody wins” ending. You could do a similar thing if the McGuffin is like, a Genie’s lamp and their struggle over the prize winds up freeing the Genie from his prison, or something like that.

Van Helsing could have been much better. I would have rather seen Van Helsing be more like a Castlevania type of character instead ripping off James Bond. Could he have been strong and cunning enough to fight all these monsters without an automatic crossbow given to him by some character that was obviously Q? fixing the cgi would not fix the movie.

ToadRoad

October 17, 2015 at 1:15 pm

I don’t think Van Helsing is as bad as many people say, but that CGI is really distracting.

Actually thats not a bad idea, because it ties the film up with the reality, which is like a new millenia-fashion. Though it seems “unserious”, but I think it has some base behind it. Because I feel like, the thing that connects the monsters (at least most of them) is that they are somehow defeated in all the movies and obviously they don’t want that. And as soon as this from the start is going to be a breakout, all the monsters loose, I think they’d want to continue on “not die” in this world of shit. So its like, this option has two sides, on the one light/comedy site, they are just fighting for a remake (which is like money chasing) and on the other sad one, they are like the team of old wrestlers fighting for their place among all the young ones. So all in all the goal is to prove (remind) whos the boss here and on the top get a new film. (and I think the plot centered about something out of their universe “new film” can be played in many ways, could even be kept secret until the end while being more abstract)

I want to see a Dracula Vs The Mummy movie because they are both undead lords from the past, battling for the power to rule again. Plus they tend to have the most powers in order to do battle with each other.

I started writing this big long response as to why I believe this generation is incapable of creating a “serious” horror movie starring the universal monsters due to the times we live in and the way history has shaped us and how people have lived through much much scarier events in VERY recent history…but I stopped because I feel like this would be a better topic for someone’s dissertation than for a message board. I feel like your Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World idea would be better received (even though it’s also very dated for today’s people) and I feel like the shared “Marvel-esque” action films of the monsters would be best received by today’s people.

There’s a reason why more young people today have read and are more familiar with comics than they are with the bible, believe it or not. I say capitalize on that as much as possible and strike while the iron is hot. These are the times we live in…but times change and nothing lasts forever. Some day the marvel films will be viewed with the same derision as black and white films with some future generation deriding “super hero films” and how they refuse to watch them on the grounds that they are super hero films.

Promise of a legendary magical Island secluded from the world.
The Island will re-shape itself to the owning monster’s needs.
The “race” is rigged so all monster arrive at the boat the same time.
There is no Island.
It’s just a ploy to get them on all on one boat.
So they can get attacked/killed by the mastermind’s pet shark: Jaws.
Everyone “dies” except for Jaws and the Creature.
During their fight the Kraken shows up and pulls everything down to the ocean floor.
Jaws, the Creature, the remains of the monsters and the ship remains vanish out of sight.

Ok, not so much horror movies as comedies…
If it were a “fight all monsters”, it would definitively be easier to make a VS “Street Fighter” game than a movie. But a semi-cooperative story to find a common goal (and betrayals near the end) could become a pretty good movie there.
Although, adapting the comics sounds like a good plan there as well.

The Maguffin should be the Mummy’s heart, taken from him during burial rites and separated from him. The Mummy obviously wants a piece of himself back. Dracula would love to have not only an immortal bleeding heart to drink from, but also the Mummy as a slave. The Wolfman wants it to have a full blood transfusion to rid himself of the curse. Frankenstein wants to make his monster stronger with it. The Creature from the Black Lagoon just gets caught up in when its bestial instincts go in to high gear from all these strange people being around.

I’m afraid the monsters are going be CGI and terribly misrepresented. Hollywood is willing to destroy anything for personal monetary gain (The Smurfs, Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks). I would just stick to the original films.

I think the McGuffin would be something related to the message “they want to be remembered”. So the treasure would be copies of their old movies in reels. These are their memories that need to be preserved, memories that are dying. It makes for a more emotional ending and “feel good” ending.

Imagine something like Dracula finding the reel of “Son of Dracula” and saying “Oh, I know this! I love this movie! It had Lon Chaney Jr, remember?”. Then The Wolf Man would grab a reel of one of his movies and say something similar like “Oh! Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man! I missed this so much! It has Bela Lugosi! I had so much with making this!”.

There is kinda a Film like James descriped (allthought its a Cartoon -> Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf )

That Plot (taken form wiki): Every year, all of the classic Hollywood monsters (consisting of Frankenstein’s monster, his wife Repulsa, a Mummy, the Witch Sisters, Bone Jangles the Skeleton, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Snyde, Swamp Thing, and Dragonfly) gather at Count Dracula’s castle in Transylvania for the “Monster Road Rally”, an ultimate road race similar to Wacky Races, awarding the winner with the “Monster of the Year” award as well as many other prizes only monsters would enjoy (and one prize — a trip to Hawaii — that none of the monsters want).

I definitely would like a Frankenstein movie that is more accurate to the novel. Marvel sure did that in Monster of Frankenstein so I’m definitely for them doing a whole Golden Age monster universe. That’s the only way I can see a action-oriented series starring the Universal horror icons and they can even reveal Blade in Tomb of Dracula.

Sadly, I predict a flop in what Universal might do. Can’t they just get a license like what Sony and Fox did?

Well, in the original book of “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy did go to Oz, but the film made it a dream because they thought audiences wouldn’t take a fantasy film seriously if it weren’t a dream. I’m an Oz dork. XD

Thanks, man! Glad you understand!
By the way, James and Mike ARE running scared, ’cause they haven’t done SHIT! HA!!!

ward debussac

October 16, 2015 at 6:56 pm

Have you guys ever seen “Frankenstein and Me”? I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, but this made me video think of it. I watched the trailer just now and it’s total low budget, but I saw it a few times on Super Channel as a kid and thought it was pretty awesome. It has all the monsters- probably totally got sued to shit afterwards in hindsight.

Maguffin: A young beautiful woman. Seems like in all the Universal movies there is a young beautiful woman. Frankenstein’s monster would want to marry her, Dracula would want her for a bride, Mummy would want her for a bride, Wolfman would want to fall in love with her to feel more human…basically all these monster’s just want lovin’. They’re not evil, just very hormonal. That’s how I always viewed the monster movies. Plus, keeping it simple is always best.

James, Mike, you know, Zombies Ate My Neighbors would be a great idea for a movie with all the classic monsters. A classic game that has potential to reignite the flame for those monsters lost in time. If you ever played the game, I think you would strongly agree. I mean there is a plot already laid out. You’ll probably need to tweek it a bit, cause the game itself doesn’t really give a detailed explanation besides the fact that the chaos was caused by a mad scientist names Dr. Toungue. Questions linger on like How, when, and where we’re never really explained to me whenever I played the game.anyways, I’m just a huge fan of that game and it would be cool i know what your thoughts would be on this idea.

Personally I would like the see the Universal monsters reinvented as kind of horror-themed super-antiheroes. I’d give all of them their own films, maybe a couple crossover battles and then have them united in one film as a reluctant group to battle some realy powerful menace like Count Orlock or a Zombie plague or something like that.

I really enjoy how passionate you guys are on the Universal Monster’s topic and just want to see your favorite movies done justice. I think that the movie industry does have a soft spot for the classic monsters. The #2 top box office movie right now is Hotel Transylvania 2 and has grossed $117 million in three weeks. So all the classic monsters appear in the film and it’s an animated comedy for kids. So they are trying to keep the great characters relevant for new generations of monster fans who may not even know about the black and white films. It’s probably extremely difficult to capture the magic of the originals in the remakes. I wasn’t all that impressed with the Wolfman remake with Benicio Del Toro. As hard as they tried to capture the essence of the original the really ruined the ending. As much as I would like to see a serious attempt to remake the classics, I feel like maybe it just can’t be done justice. Interesting ideas about blending the classic monsters with other films though. Keep up the great videos!

My family got together at my brother’s campsite last night, and as we were sitting around the camp fire, he said we should watch a Halloween movie. I had brought my horror collection along w/ me just in case. I popped in “Creature From the Black Lagoon”, and we all made s’mores as we watched it. Good stuff. I love the classics.

If they did reboot the Universal Monsters series, I would want them to be pure horror, low-budget remakes. None of this big-budget, larger than life CGI crap-fests. I, Frankenstein and Dracula Untold were HORRIBLE. I hated Van Helsing and Constantine and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and all these bullshit takes on classic media. Just take it back to its pure horror roots with no fuss. That’s what I want.

When you mentioned the monster versions of Wizard of Oz and Mad Mad Mad Mad World, did you mean them as comedies? As soon as you mentioned the Muppets, I thought it would be cool to have a Muppet Monster Movie along the lines of those Abbott and Costello team-ups.

McGuffin could maybe be a potion that cures whatever monster of their “curse”. I mean, it’s debatable, but I think a lot of the monsters would either want to not be monsters, or at least to have possession of some such potion or amulet. Maybe Dr. Frankenstein discovered some radiation raygun that turns monsters back into ordinary people… or sharks or whatever.

I really like James’s “Wizard of Oz” and “Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” idea. Universal’s got a lot of great ideas they could work with but I feel like every generation deserves new horrific re-tellings of these classic characters. Mike makes some great points though. By having these new movies more action oriented and with a PG-13 rating, the characters could appeal to younger audiences which could lead them to the older flicks. I heard that there was talk of a serious remake of “Creature From The Black Lagoon” but from the looks of it, that’ll probably never happen. Great video guys! Tried commenting earlier but my post wasn’t showing up for some odd reason. So if this pops up twice i’m sorry! Looking forward to more videos! Cinemassacre kicks ass! \m/

I think they could pull off the action/horror thing if they write a universe similar to the anime Hellsing! An insanely indestructible and immortal Dracula vs. Nazis and the Catholic Church. Pure AWESOMENESS!

this is a great discussion. I cat see all of the monsters getting their own films because sadly I think the culture isn’t capable of taking the wolfman, jackel/hyde or possibly even gilman seriously. I think these guys will show up as supporting characters or cameos… but I can see a modern take on Frankenstein where the doctor is a military scientist and frankenstein is a black ops project. That’d be cool.

This will sound weird.. but I kinda want them all in oen movie together… and be a bit like the avengers.. but evil and they’ll go around terrorising the modern world… anyone else think if it was done REALLY REALLY well, and I mean PERFECTLY it would be great. Right??

I feel the classic approach wouldn’t work anymore. A couple of monsters walking around strangling people aren’t interesting for most people and it would feel tired and not very original. It would be a new version, updated and for current audiences.
And I have to disagree, the golden age of horror is the 80’s for me.